Towards transformative justice for un-coerced adult female sex workers in South Africa : an approach that speaks to the multi-layered and multi-faceted realities of women in South Africa
Date
2024-03
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Publisher
Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
Abstract
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study provides insight into the lived experiences of sex workers in South Africa and the legal and policy frameworks that shape their lives, with the ultimate goal of contributing to a more just and equitable society. This was done through an intersectional analysis of the position of the sex worker in South Africa within a constitutional dispensation. The transition to democracy prompted a significant and radical paradigm shift in South African law. It required the transformation of patterns of legal, social, cultural, and economic disadvantage, which was intended to serve all of those who have previously been excluded or situated on the margins. It is questionable, then, why sex workers suffer human rights abuses with high incidences of sexual and other violence, unemployment, and lack of access to legal and health services. A key finding of this study is that the criminal law framework cannot respect the sex worker as an autonomous individual while simultaneously addressing her vulnerability within institutionalised frameworks of power. Far from being something obvious and an expression of natural law, the regulation and criminalisation of sex work have always been ambiguous and contested, serving larger agendas of colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid governments. Informed by rigid gender identities and expectational norms, various agendas of punitive control have entrenched an ideological legal framework that excludes sex workers from constitutional protection. Because sex workers remain outside the realm of constitutional protection, they have been unable to improve their lives. This research, therefore, highlights the critical need to reframe the lens through which sex work is approached in South Africa. The study shows that to understand and act against social injustice, the life worlds of marginalised people should be the starting point of any academic and other enquiries. Intersectionality is a lens that recognises complex relationships and the differing coercive circumstances within which people exercise agency. It supports a view of justice that does not deny the reality of exploitation in sex workers’ lived experiences but rather draws attention to the role of wider social structures in its reproduction. Insofar as it moves the discourse beyond punishment and retribution (the criminal law as justice), intersectionality is a lens that recognises the relevance of lived experience, social location, embodiment and contexts of power and knowledge-making.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen opsomming beskikbaar.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen opsomming beskikbaar.
Description
Thesis (LLD)--Stellenbosch University, 2024.